Cedar Fair Entertainment Company
Cedar Fair Entertainment Company is an American amusement park company known for operating several award winning parks in North America, including Knott's Berry Farm, Valleyfair, and their flagship park, Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, which also serves as the company headquarters. The company's name is derived from the latter two parks mentioned. Cedar Fair is also the current owner and operating company of Kings Island, as well as various other amusement parks in North America that were previously owned and operated by the film and television company Viacom, through their now-defunct Paramount Parks subsidiary. Most theme parks in the Cedar Fair chain are best recognized with logos that featured a color scheme of red or blue text, with at least one instance of a lowercase "i" dotted with a flag. History Beginning in 1870, Cedar Point operated as a solely owned amusement park for many years. Almost a century after operating under one park, Cedar Point acquired ownership and management rights of the Minnesota amusement park Valleyfair in 1978. Later in 1987, the management offices of Cedar Point were re-established as Cedar Fair Entertainment Company, with the name being combination of their two parks owned at the time. Over time, Cedar Fair continued to grow as an amusement park chain, acquiring Dorney Park of Pennsylvania in 1992, Missouri's Worlds of Fun in 1995, and Knott's Berry Farm in 1997. The acquisition of Knott's Berry Farm also included the license for Cedar Fair to feature the characters of Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics and television specials in their parks (such as Charlie Brown and Snoopy), who had been present at Knott's Berry Farm since 1983. Each of Cedar Fair's parks has featured a children's area themed to the characters at some point or another, all of which use the names of either Planet Snoopy or Camp Snoopy. In 2006, Viacom had split into two divisions, with the name now being used for the smaller company of the split, with the majority of Viacom's assets, including Paramount Parks, being transferred to CBS Corporation. That same year, CBS Corporation declared they were no longer interested in participating in the theme park business, and Cedar Fair placed the highest bid on all five parks, which included Kings Island. Although the acquisition included a licensing deal in which Cedar Fair would be allowed to continue using various properties of Paramount such as Nickelodeon characters up until 2017, Cedar Fair was not interested in paying licensing fees, and began dropping such themes, beginning with changes made to rides based on films such as Top Gun ''and ''The Italian Job: Stunt Track, which became Flight Deck and Backlot Stunt Coaster, respectively. By 2010 with the opening of Planet Snoopy as Kings Island, all former intellectual properties were replaced with either themes unrelated to existing intellectual properties, or the Peanuts characters in 2010. Other changes made by Cedar Fair included the revamping of the Halloween event FearFest into Halloween Haunt, and the retheming of Boomerang Bay (which had previously dropped all references to the Crocodile Dundee films, but continued to feature an Australian outback theme) to Soak City in 2012. However, it is worth noting that Kings Island did feature a select number of days in the 2014 season for meet-and-greets with Marvel characters Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor from the 2012 film The Avengers. Although most properties of Marvel, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe film franchise, had been acquired by The Walt Disney Company in 2009, Paramount was already distributing some of these films starting with Iron Man in 2008. A deal was made that allowed Paramount's logo to be featured in the opening credits and merchandising of several follow-up Marvel films, which concluded with Iron Man 3 in 2013. Therefore the characters were technically still considered Paramount properties at the time, allowing Cedar Fair to use them temporarily that year. Since 2007, Cedar Fair's ownership of Kings Island has seen several notable events in the parks history, such as the opening and closing of Firehawk, and the addition of legendary coasters that have set various records in and out of the park such as Diamondback, Banshee, Mystic Timbers, and Orion. They have also overseen the 30th and 40th anniversaries of The Beast. They have also overseen the controversial closures of popular rides such as Son of Beast and Vortex. Trivia * As a whole, Cedar Fair owns and operates twelve amusement parks in North America. They also own and operate thirteen water parks, but only four of them are separate from the main park they are associated with. * Cedar Fair parks can best be recognized via their logos, which feature bold Arial text that generally follows a red and blue color scheme. These logos also feature at least one case of a lowercase "i" dotted with a flag. ** This is ironic when considering Cedar Fair's primary rival chain of amusement parks is Six Flags. * Although Cedar Fair generally operates parks that operate seasonally, Knott's Berry Farm is the only park owned by the company that is open year-round, possibly due to being a short drive from Disneyland Resort, whose two parks are also open year-round.